


Cast Shadows on the Surface of the Sun

by ambyr



Category: Shadowscapes Tarot
Genre: Birds, Coming of Age, Gen, Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-24
Updated: 2018-12-24
Packaged: 2019-09-26 08:42:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,965
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17138612
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ambyr/pseuds/ambyr
Summary: Lately, the Owl's shadow is finding them more swiftly. Lately, the Knight wonders if the Owl's shadow has learned to fly.





	Cast Shadows on the Surface of the Sun

**Author's Note:**

  * For [yhlee (etothey)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/etothey/gifts).



> [The Knight of Swords](http://www.shadowscapes.com/Tarot/cards.php?suit=3&card=11) and [Death](http://www.shadowscapes.com/Tarot/cards.php?suit=0&card=13) are both available for viewing online. The iconography in [The King of Swords](http://www.shadowscapes.com/Tarot/cards.php?suit=3&card=13) is also relevant to this story.

The Hawk folds its wings and plunges toward the mountains, trusting the updraft from the valley to catch it and slow its fall. One heartbeat, two, four, the ground rushing closer and closer--and then it feels the pull of the current and lets its feathers stretch to their full span, catching the warm air and glorying in the feeling of its effortless rise.

Below it, the creatures of leaf and long grass pay it no heed. Why should they? They do not know when the Hawk will cease playing, when it will allow its dive to become a hunt. They do not know the Hawk is there at all. No matter how close to the ground it falls, it casts no shadow.

* * *

"Will it hurt?" asks the Sparrow.

"No, little one," says the Knight. "And when it is gone, you will fly faster, fly farther. There will be nothing to tether you."

The Sparrow bobs its head and spreads its wings. The Knight raises his blade. And then the Sparrow launches into the sky, the sword falls, and the Sparrow's shadow splits from it, falls back into a crumpled heap onto the Earth.

"See how swift you are!" the Hummingbird enthuses, flitting circles around the Knight's head while the Sparrow soars, each lap taking it higher into the sky.

The Owl opens one eye, closes it. The Raven says nothing.

* * *

The Owl was the first bird to join the Knight. Its shadow is a tenuous thing, cast by moonglow filtered through broad-limbed trees. Sometimes tendrils crawl out of it; the shadows of twigs, the Knight thinks, caught by accident when he severed it from the bird. He thinks that when he thinks on it at all. He does not often consider the shadows, which are flimsy things. In the first days of separation, they are earthbound entirely, and his entourage leaves them behind when they take to the sky.

But the Knight cannot always be on the wing, and neither can his entourage. They come to earth; they rest. If they fly far enough, they might leave the shadows behind a day, two days--but always the shadows find them in the end. Always a day will come when the Knight wakes and finds a puddle of shadow by his campsite, having slithered and crawled its way to join them.

Lately, the Owl's shadow is finding them more swiftly. Lately, the Knight wonders if the Owl's shadow has learned to fly.

"What does it mean?" he demands of the Owl. He had cut the shadow from the Owl so that the Owl's wisdom might grow sharper, more decisive, unsullied by concerns of maybe and might-have-been.

The Owl looks at the shadow, looks at the Knight.

"I never saw much purpose to my shadow," he observes. "What use is a shadow when everything is dark?"

The Knight flexes his wings in irritation. This is not the directness he craves.

"On the other hand," the Owl continues, "What use is a lamp in sunlight?"

"I will ask the Raven," the Knight announces. The sun has already risen, and the Owl is blinking steadily; perhaps it is too hard for him, hunter of the moon and stars, to speak and think at daybreak.

"Where is _your_ shadow, Knight?" the Owl calls after him.

* * *

Where is the sun's shadow? Where is the shadow of the candle flame?

The Knight casts no shadow; he cannot. There is nothing that shines more brightly than he.

* * *

"For myself," the Swan says, a little fatuously, "I have never missed it. Oh! So much time I spent, twisting my neck, trying to see if there was a spot of dirt on my back or merely the shadow of my own beak. But for you--for you, it must have been like losing a twin."

"Indeed," says the Raven--says one of the Ravens.

"Or like gaining one," says the other Raven.

The Raven's shadow learned to fly before the Owl's. They have been trading places for the better part of half a year--one to fly with the Knight, and one to tend his own business. They have been careful, before, to keep apart. Now they face each other and regard the Knight, one with its left eye and one with its right.

The Knight stops when he sees them side by side. His hand twitches to his sword hilt.

"Which of you," he asks, "is my Raven?"

The Ravens blink at him in unison. He draws his sword a handspan, and its light spills out. He thinks to catch the Ravens out this way, to spot which bird is the trickster and which merely his shadow--but as the light spreads, a second, shadow Raven grows behind both birds. Hastily, he sheaths his sword.

"We are--"

"--both your--"

"--father's birds."

"But I _made_ you," he protests. "One of you."

"All ravens--"

"--are your father's."

"And our own," one Raven adds, addressing its twin.

"And our own," the twin agrees.

"Very well," the Knight says. He values the Raven's insight but has little patience for games. "What does my father want?"

"Your father," says one Raven--the other is suddenly busy picking in the dirt for worms--"thinks it is time you sought out a new bird."

"I have the Hawk for sight, the Sparrow for swiftness, the Hummingbird for bravery, the Swan for grace, the Owl for wisdom. And you, of course," he adds, grudgingly. "What more do I need?"

The other raven snaps its beak shut, gulps down the worm, and opens it again. "The Phoenix," he says. "The Phoenix, for change."

* * *

All the shadows are flying now, the Knight thinks; no matter how quickly they travel toward the Phoenix, they find the shadows there each morning, no longer puddled at the roots of whichever tree they chose to make their roost but clinging to its branches.

Daybreak comes earlier in the land of the Phoenix; the sun is brighter. And the shadows are turning black as pitch. The Knight ignores them. He has a mission, a purpose; he has no time for distractions. That has always been his way: to set a goal and fly toward it, and cut away anything that seems likely to add subtlety or delay.

* * *

The Phoenix, when the Knight finds it, is old, fading. Its feathers are not the molten gold of legend but tarnished bronze. The Knight wonders, for a moment, at the bird's ability. Will its wings be swift enough to keep pace with the entourage? Will it have anything to offer?

"If you come with me," he announces, "I will cut away your shadow. You are a bird of change, are you not? But your shadow keeps you fixed in shape and form. Lose it, and be reborn into whatever form you wish."

The Phoenix laughs--and in its laugh if not its form the Knight sees its famed beauty, for its laugh is song and joy and heartbreak, all in one.

"That power I have already, Knight," it says. "Or did you think this was the only shape I have worn?" There is a shimmer about it--smoke above a campfire, mirage in the desert. In that heat haze the Knight sees many things: the Sun, but also the Moon; a Woman, but also a Man; a Fox wreathed in fox-fire, but also a steadily glowing Anglerfish.

"Then what can I give you?" he asks, impatient, ready for the task to be done.

"Wrong question," says the Raven.

"Sit on my branch," the Phoenix says. "It is almost time." And indeed his feathers are beginning to smolder, as though banked embers were fanned back to life along every vane.

Gingerly, the Knight perches on the gnarled wood. Beside the growing glow of the Phoenix, he is not, for the first time, the brightest creature in the room. He turns his head; behind him, something is gathering. 

_Smoke_ , he thinks at first. _The branch is catching fire._

He tenses his wings and readies himself to launch, but the Ravens land suddenly on his shoulders. If one is a shadow, he cannot tell from its weight.

"Stay steady," one advises, as he watches his shadow coalesce. He watches his shadow because he cannot watch the Phoenix; it is too bright to view.

"Will it hurt?" asks the Knight.

"Be brave," advises the Hummingbird. Its shadow has found it, and they dance together in the complex air currents that spiral outward from the Phoenix's heat.

"Yes," says the other Raven, less comfortingly. 

The Knight opens his mouth to protest--and the Phoenix catches flame, searing his eyes with afterimages, searing every shadow into place.

* * *

The Knight--who is not, he thinks, a Knight any more--cannot stop twisting to look at his shadow. He has spent his whole life never looking backward; now, he cannot turn away.

"It pulls on me," he protests to the Owl.

The Owl opens one eye. "The past should weigh on you," he says, "King. For a youth, impulse and drive are all very well. But you cannot have the wisdom to rule without memory and restraint."

"You let me cut your shadow away," the young King points out.

One of the Ravens snickers. The Owl fixes it with an unblinking stare, then swivels its head back to the King. "I had the wisdom," it says, "to know it would be temporary. I have seen this before."

"Then my father--"

"--was the Knight, too, in his day," the Owl agrees.

The King sits quietly on this for a moment, fingering his sword hilt without drawing it. "Will I see him again?" he asks, finally. He has seen very little of his father in recent years; their beliefs so often clash. He finds, suddenly, that he misses him.

"Perhaps," says one raven.

"And in the meantime--"

"--you have us."

"My birds now in truth, then?" the King asks. "Or your own birds?"

The Ravens caw, and do not answer.

* * *

"You are the strongest of my entourage," the King tells the Swan, "and so I entrust my sword to you. Bear it to my sister. Tell her it is her turn to wield it for a time."

The Swan, which has been admiring the contrast between its snowy feathers and its shadow, bobs its head.

"I will fly with you to guide the way," says the Hawk.

"And I fly before you to tell her of your coming," says the Sparrow.

"And I--" starts the Hummingbird, but the King interrupts.

"No, little one. You will stay with me."

"Your father," observes the Raven, "reigned with only us. And the Owl," it adds, under the night bird's unblinking stare.

"But I am not my father," says the King. "And did you not tell me the Phoenix was for change? I will need a little bravery, I think, to take on this role."

"You _are_ brave," says the Hummingbird, loyally. If the King looks very closely, he can see that the Hummingbird's shadow does not mirror its movements but harmonizes with them, a partner in the dance of flight. He is not the only one who has changed.

"It takes one kind of courage to go forward," says the Owl, "and another to return."

The King nods and spreads his wings. They are broader now, he thinks, but perhaps that is only a trick of the shadows. At his feet, the egg of the Phoenix gleams, its light undaunted by the darkness of his wings.

"When my sister comes," he tells it, "be kind."

And then he takes to the air, the Hummingbird flitting about him, the Ravens spiraling ahead, and the Owl gliding silently behind. The sun is low on the horizon, and their shadows, where they touch the earth, are long.


End file.
